Salon: Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio

[kskiska]

The John Kerry campaign offices may still be dark in this key battleground state, but an invisible tidal wave is growing here against the president.

The road-rage Republicans are out early this year in Ohio.

It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.

Such folks form the backbone of the George W. Bush "Amway"-model campaign detailed recently in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Prospecting the prefab suburban wilderness for votes, the Bush machine's efforts in Ohio raise the obvious question: What are Democrats doing in response?

A Democrat looking for solace in the obvious places will find little encouragement. Walking into a Democratic Party office anywhere in this key presidential battleground state is like walking into a morgue. The Cleveland party office, the epicenter of the most important region of the state for Democrats, is a deserted storefront that until last week didn't have a single Kerry for President sign. Locked doors greet potential volunteers who peer into the emptiness inside.

(snip)

Doesn't look good for Kerry in Ohio, does it?

Not so fast.

During primary season, I dragged my apolitical friend Lori from Meetup to Meetup all over Cleveland, the two of us shopping around for a new president on snowy winter nights that would keep normal people huddled indoors. The Meetup groups we encountered were nonpolitical types from various economic, racial, and educational backgrounds whose average was 40-ish. People who looked way outside their comfort zone at a political meeting. People like Lori herself, who was unimpressed with the turnouts, which totaled 20 to 30 people as a rule. "Seems pretty low," she kept saying. "What do you think?"

Having grown up in Ohio politics, working with every presidential election in the state since 1988, and acutely aware of the cobwebs, crickets and tumbleweed of the Ohio Democratic Party, I had a very different perspective.

"Are you kidding me?" I shot back. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/04/ohio/index.html